Kinmokusei 金木犀: this is what that smell is

Japan smells like perfume for a few weeks in the fall. The reason is the fragrant olive tree, or kinmokusei in Japanese. It has dark,　pointed oval leaves like a regular olive tree and clusters of little bright orange flowers. I don't remember ever smelling this at home. The sweet smell was so strong in my neighborhood in Miyazaki that it was almost nauseating on warm evenings. I wondered if it's ever actually used in perfume.
It turns out that it is used as a fragrance, but not very often. And this is not without reason—from the 70's to the mid-90's, kinmokusei was the only game in town when it came to toilet deodorizers. For the majority of Japanese people old enough to remember, the smell is too closely associated with bathrooms to be repurposed. Way to ruin nature!
It seems like this may be changing, though, as other scents like lavender and soap take over bathroom duty. I bought some hand cream the other day, a fall-only limited fragrance called Osmanthus. It smelled nice, but not familiar. I gave some to a coworker to try, and she looked up the name and said "Ohhhh, of course! Kinmokusei! You know that tree, right? Everyone knows that tree!"

Mister Softee is parked in Tokyo

Chocolate banana, off the secret menu

Mister Softee has joined Auntie Anne's, Ben &Jerry's, and Bubby's in conspiring to keep me well (poorly) fed in Tokyo. (Yes, there's a new-ish Wendy's, but I don't really care about it and its foie gras stuntburgers. Which, incidentally, may not be doing so well, as they had people standing on the street handing out coupons this weekend. You heard it here first!) I helped our writer put a little story about it on Japan Pulse, and then I headed over to see the place for myself over the weekend. I expected a certain dissonance in seeing that classic logo nestled among expensive Italian chocolate-covered figs, but it worked. The woman who runs it, Andrea Fisher, was very friendly and totally impressive. There's a long version of her story, but the short version is that she loves ice cream and brought Mister Softee here by sheer determination. She's also a Julliard-trained flautist and runs her own bag company and didn't stop driving her ice cream truck around Brooklyn even when an angry Armenian slashed her tires. (Alex and I left feeling excited by the reminder that there are people out there getting stuff done in a big way and more guilty than ever about our own little unfocused projects.) She's coming up with new flavors to make in their fancy mix-in machine every day. She told us a few of the ones she's working on to add to the lineup of berry, cactus and apple pie. There's one in particular in the works that I don't think I'm supposed to reveal. But I have a feeling that once she starts selling it, you'll hear about it.

Hanging with Ernesto Neto in Tokyo

This is not Ernesto Neto.

We found some very cool art to climb around in. It's a huge installation by Brazilian artist Ernesto Neto hanging above, of all places, the Louis Vuitton store in Omotesando. Not exactly a place that conjures images of taking your shoes off and giggling in mid-air. You feel like you've stumbled into the lair of a space spider.
It's open til the beginning of January. And it's free! Gorgeous sunset view.
Pop into the the Louis Vuitton shop and hang a very, very quick right to get to the elevator that goes right to the Espace Louis Vuitton gallery.
Thanks to Jason Jenkins for the tip!

Death (flowers) in the cemetery

How appropriate.

I walk through Aoyama Cemetery one or two mornings a week, sometimes three. I love it. There's no place where I more consistently feel gratitude for my life here. Starting simply with being on the right side of the marble slabs. And from there to everything else: that my legs and feet and knees are cool with walking a few kilometers, that it's a pretty route, that I have a job to walk to, that it's work I enjoy that pays well, that my friendly co-worker keeps the office stocked with fresh boxes of cookies. And there's the cemetery itself. I like knowing I could take a slightly different path through it every day and not run out of variations for a long, long time. I love how it smells a little different each time I'm there, with something new always sprouting or withering. This week the hell flowers were in bloom. I'd forgotten about discovering the flowers of the dead for the first time last year until I stumbled over them near a few graves. They appear suddenly and die fast. 

Catching an unexpected glimpse of them is just one more thing to be happy about in the cemetery.

Why are you hogging the priority seats!?

Please offer the courtesy seat when someone needs it.

I dare say New Yorkers are better than Tokyoites at giving up their seats on subways. I have a few recently pregnant friends in NYC who might beg to differ. Overall, however, it seems to be more of a point of pride for people there to swap places with the injured, the elderly and the pregnant. Japan comes out ahead in adorable pole-swinging mystery critters, though, of course.